In occupied Kashmir, Indian forces’ personnel subjected peaceful protesters to brute force in Shopian district on Saturday.
People staged forceful demonstrations at Chillipora Heff in the district after Indian police and troops launched a siege and search operation in the area.
The police and troops fired teargas shells to disperse the demonstrators, triggering clashes between the protesters and the forces’ personnel. The clashes were going on when reports last came in.
‘Pellet guns can’t suppress Kashmir struggle’
Meanwhile, the Hurriyet forum Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has said that pellet guns and other brutalities cannot suppress the Kashmiris’ ongoing liberation movement.
Umar Farooq, while addressing a public gathering in Srinagar, said that Kashmir dispute was a living reality and Indian government’s attempt to define Kashmiris’ movement for the right to self-determination under the rubric of terrorism could not stop people from pursuing their demand.
He said that neither fresh diktats to enrol mosque imams and preachers or creating a sectarian divide, nor resurrecting the infamous Special Operations Group of Indian police could make the people give up their basic political demand and bring peace and normalcy in the territory. Had it been so, people of the subcontinent would have given up their struggle for independence, he added.
“Instead of looking at ways and means to maintain the status-quo and subvert the people’s struggle, it would be in the best interest of all parties involved in the Kashmir dispute that all energies and efforts are expended at the resolution of the dispute in accordance with the people’s wishes and bring stability and prosperity to the region,” he said.